


The deconstruction of herself

by Transistance



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Canon Trans Character, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Makeup
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-17
Updated: 2016-01-17
Packaged: 2018-05-14 09:41:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5738851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Transistance/pseuds/Transistance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grell has a routine, every night, as women do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The deconstruction of herself

Her shoes come off at the door. There's no point to wearing them in the house; although she does love the freedom of movement they give her, all unpredictable fluid femininity, they never have been quite the right shape for her (clumsy, flat) feet and she has long since learned that keeping them on for too long hurts. It's not as though she'll have callers to notice.

Grell is not a short woman, but has always been thankful that her height is (although greater than that of an average female) still small enough to wear her heels without reaching the height of most of her male colleagues. It feels good to surround herself with them; men make her stature and presentation obvious in a way that she alone can't. Not that they ever want to. But they likely as not notice none of the skill she applies to the situations, and think nothing of it when she stays so close to them (even when not flirting).

The coat is next to go. It's too hot and bulky, and in spite of the comfort it does give her to have something so full of memories close, that's really all it needs to be – close. It feels good, so _very_ good, to be able to move her arms properly after a day of the constriction of a coat tailored to someone else's body. 

As she has nothing planned for the evening, it doesn't seem worth changing much further just yet. Grell likes the tightness of her waistcoat around her chest, and the practicality of her trousers and the crisp lines of her shirt; although they highlight a figure which doesn't flatter a woman it is hers, and it is beautiful in its own way. She is beautiful. There's few who'll tell her that, but sometimes she turns too fast for them and is gratified when she catches their guilty eyes.

Later, later, hours later, the lights begin to fade and Grell knows that there is not long until she will have to stop being herself again. As she does every night, she resents that she knows not to linger awake and put it off – she needs her sleep. In sleep she is as comfortable as ever, but...

It's the time between. The time after she has removed all aspects of herself from her ageless, wrong body but before she manages to forget that she has done so; the time in which she cannot pretend to know herself as anything but what stares at her from the mirror. In this time she comes adrift, every night, and wishes there were any other way.

At first it's not so difficult. Changing into a nightgown actually helps, for a moment; certainly at first glance it is better than her work attire. It hangs too loose about her chest and too tight around her waist, but that's no matter. It is a female coded garment. It has _lace_. It is hers, as hers as the shirt and waistcoat. But then, pain looms; Grell's poor, pristine face must die its daily death in order for any rebirth to occur the next morning. This too she has learned from experience; once or twice in her youth Grell gave in to the weakness of being unable to bring herself to that level of self-destruction and slept without removing any aspect of her mask, praying that she wouldn't have to see herself, wouldn't have to acknowledge it. And each time she had paid for it with red eyes and chaffed lips, flaking scabs and sores. She has learned – but she still doesn't like it.

The white powder washes off easily – it is only superficial, after all. It's nothing. Its removal does not peel away a layer of her; merely makes her look grubby, a little blurred. No, it's the base layers beneath that that take from her.

The fact that her skin is a little marred, that there's blemishes here and there and a scar or two from incidents in the past – that isn't a problem. It's the way that the removal of her second skin wipes away the softness of her cheeks and hollows out her eyes, casting the brow above them suddenly heavy and her bone structure nothing but hard. She's had so many years to perfect how she looks when other people can see her, and it is almost unnoticeable, really, now, from her face – and then when she is alone it is almost a shock.

And then there's her eyes. Her wonderful, stunning, gorgeous eyes; at least their vibrancy is true. But the lashes hurt regardless of whether they are pulled off gently or torn away, and the sticky, itchy mess that they leave behind leaves her muddled and weary. Her tear ducts sting. She knows she shouldn't apply so much force in attempting to clear the paint, clear the mascara, dig deep to reach the plain pallid skin that is so hidden behind her glasses and her art. For the transitory time she looks terrible, all greyish smears and blotchy smudges, but as she works the skin does clear and eventually her face is devoid of all the effort she placed in it the morning before. She doesn't look bad – only human.

Grell smiles wide, the last true grin of the night, and works one thumb within her mouth, slowly removing the near-permanent charm that allows each tooth to prick sharp and returning them to their true bland state. White, still, well cared for, but flat and characterless. There's nothing unearthly about them; they are so incredibly normal.

She watches herself in the mirror. Almost there. Almost, almost, almost finished. She looks away. She looks back. She hates this final offence against herself more than she can hate any other cruelty that has been bestowed upon her.

Grell bares her straight teeth, pushes her hands slowly into her scalp and carefully, carefully lifts the wig from her head.

Eyes closed, she takes the time to brush it through – repetitive, perfect – and place it on its stand where it can mock her if she chooses to look at it before finding herself in the mirror again.

The young man who looks back at her can't be out of his twenties; there's something still unformed about his face, as though he wasn't quite mature when its growth was cut short. But in spite of his youth his eyes – his vivid, green, _alien_ eyes – are full of such haggard contemplation that Grell almost feels sorry for him.

Almost.

She wonders often who cut his hair. Had it been he himself, on a whim? Some disgusted family member, some ignorant friend? Not a paid barber, certainly. The edges are rough and jagged all round, but she has never felt able to bring herself to cut them into something more tidy for the desire not to lose any more of her hair. That's the thing about the half-hearted corpses that reapers are forced to inhabit – they do not grow. They do not age. They are timeless, a nasty construct designed to force their bearer to look at the face of their killer every day, in every mirror. But she has circumvented this. His face is wrong, his short, masculine hair – as red as hers, as thick as hers - a disgusting sign of something she should not be. Grell has owned many, many wigs, extending their length over time as though through some miracle of life – and that is her secret. Her colleagues in the office have never been told. She is careful with the men she beds; they have never caught her out. Over time reapers have arrived and left the office as is natural, and she doubts there are any who recall that there was such a creature as Grell Sutciff, short haired.

William knows. William is an exception here, as in most things. She used to catch him watching her, when they were younger, when he was finding the first ropes of the management position. She knew that he had been considering whether to strip her of this one security, what effect that could have on her.

Grell meets her own eyes again, pulls a face and turns away. This body isn't hers – not yet. It's not how she's supposed to be. But only she knows that, and only she ever will. The others – they can mock and jeer and spit all they like, but they have never seen the man in the mirror. They don't know who (s)he is.

And they never will.

When she turns away, she doesn't see the man anymore. She doesn't see the long crimson tresses of the wig, or the accusatory stare of the spent eyelashes, sad insects that lie discarded where she has left them. (She doesn't see anything much; her glasses are not on her face.) The cold covers of her bed welcome her, regardless of her body and her clothes and her hair and her past, and she is thankful for the dark.

Grell pulls her bony, strong legs up to her chest and sinks her head into her arms, and when she dreams she is herself again.


End file.
